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Credit & Copyright: Alessandro Cipolat Bares
Explanation:
The Dark Doodad Nebula drifts
through southern skies,
a tantalizing target for binoculars toward the small constellation
Musca, The Fly.
A dusty interstellar cloud, it's seen against
rich starfields just south of the Coalsack Nebula and the Southern Cross.
Stretching for about 3 degrees across this telescopic field of view,
the Dark Doodad
is punctuated near its southern tip (upper right) by yellowish
globular star cluster
NGC 4372.
Of course NGC 4372 roams the halo of our
Milky Way
galaxy, a background object some 20,000 light-years away and only
by chance along our line-of-sight to the Dark Doodad.
About 700 light-years distant and over 30 light-years long,
the Dark Doodad's well defined silhouette belongs to the
potentially star-forming
Musca
molecular cloud.
The dusty Dark Doodad's delightfully alliterative moniker was first coined by
astro-imager
and writer
Dennis di Cicco in 1986 while
observing Comet Halley from the Australian outback.
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A service of: LHEA at NASA / GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
Based on Astronomy Picture
Of the Day
Publications with keywords: globular cluster - dark nebula
Publications with words: globular cluster - dark nebula
See also: